He’s Wild and Crazy, but a Subtle Guy, Too

The comedian Steve Martin performing in 1975, before the height of his fame.Credit
Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives-Getty Images

No stand-up comic has arguably ever been bigger than Steve Martin. His albums sold in the millions. His act drew crowds in the tens of thousands. Critics adored him. Then, at the height of his success, he quit.

Fame, a familiar scapegoat, has taken the blame. In his lovely memoir, “Born Standing Up,” Mr. Martin wrote that he became less of a comedian and more of a “party host.” But the essential new boxed set “Steve Martin: The Television Stuff” (Shout! Factory) tells a different story. While stand-up is typically best at its most intimate, Mr. Martin’s act was an exception. His satirical routine kept growing with the size of his theaters, turning rock-star comedy into a delirious spectacle, performance art for the masses.

Mr. Martin has appeared in so many bland movies lately (who can forget his recent comedy “The Big Year,” besides everyone?) that it’s easy to lose sight of how funny he is. “Television Stuff” reminds us with sketches and some uneven television specials from the 1970s and ’80s that shoehorn Mr. Martin’s sensibility into a variety-show format.

The most successful is “Steve Martin’s Best Show Ever,” which featured many of the original “Saturday Night Live” stars. The special was produced by Lorne Michaels in 1981, after he left the series before returning a few years later. At a time when audiences were missing the not-ready-for-prime-time players, it has the feel of a happy reunion.

By contrast, Mr. Martin’s savviest material from the past two decades is on talk shows and awards shows.

“When I was told I won this award,” he said as he accepted the lifetime achievement honor at the American Comedy Awards in 2000, “I spent the next three weeks trying to, well, care.”

It’s a good joke made great by the mock sincerity of his delivery, particularly the way he performs flabbergasted speechlessness (pause, squint, head shake) right before the crisply spoken final word. But what’s most revealing is the contrast between the boxed set’s stand-up routines: one right at the cusp of his stardom (an HBO special taped in October 1976, the month he hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time) and the other in its red-hot center in 1979.

The most obvious change is the scale, moving from a West Hollywood nightclub, the Troubadour, to the vastly larger Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. His persona has also changed subtly. His earlier act takes aim at a particular brand of Las Vegas fakery. Mr. Martin laughs insincerely, juggles and constantly tells us we’re having fun.

He’s a cheesy entertainer, but with a wink. By making jokes about philosophy (he studied it in college), and by doing a Jimmy Carter joke, he puts distance between himself and his persona. He also does this more cleverly by subverting the structure of comedy, unpacking the logic of others.

“Hi, I’m Steve Martin and I’ll be out in just a sec,” he says at the top of the HBO special.

Mr. Martin was hardly the only one deconstructing comedy in the 1970s. Albert Brooks’s short films did this brilliantly, and his absurdist ventriloquism shared a sensibility with Mr. Martin’s humor.

So did the oily insincerity of Bill Murray’s lounge act and Martin Mull’s talk show host on “Fernwood Tonight.” Andy Kaufman also toyed with form. Mr. Martin belonged to a scene, but his stratospheric rise put him in another category. It changed the context. When you wink in an amphitheater, the audience can’t tell. So he adjusted.

By 1979 he has more fully committed to his character, turning him into a preposterously successful fool. Gone are the political and philosophical bits. In their place are jokes about the ridiculousness of performing in a room more appropriate for rock bands. He mocks pandering to the crowd before doing just that. Where he once sent up a very specific kind of showbiz style, he now more directly lampoons himself.

With decades of perspective, this act appears more original, even singular. For one thing, our fragmented culture makes this level of fame difficult to achieve. Brazen showmanship has also given way to conspicuous displays of authenticity. It has become cliché for comedians to say they didn’t really become good until they drew from real life. Mr. Martin’s act is not only a rebuke to simple, romantic notions of comedic truth, it’s also explicitly preoccupied with artifice. And it mocks the relationship between performer and fan.

He asks his audience to repeat the “nonconformist oath” in unison, a grand gag similar to one in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian,” which also came out in 1979. Part of Mr. Martin’s joke is that worshiping celebrities isn’t that different from following a messiah.

This could easily take on a harsher edge, but Mr. Martin’s humor has always had a gentleness that doesn’t allow it to go too dark. It can veer into sentimental mush, but when handled delicately (see “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”), it can be potent.

Instead of being trapped by his success, his onstage character’s obliviousness allows him to enjoy it. He’s a fool one moment, the Harold Hill of stand-up the next. His onstage character appears more alive than the sober, literate Steve Martin you find in interviews or essays in The New Yorker. At times it seems as if he were ridiculing synthetic entertainers the way Woody Allen pokes fun at Jews.

Mr. Martin’s formative years, it’s worth recalling, were spent working at Disneyland. His act makes you want to believe Oscar Wilde’s witticism: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

What really comes into focus on a larger stage is Mr. Martin’s remarkable physical grace. He becomes much more mannered, clownish and precisely broad. He alternates between manic and dignified. His arms jerk back and forth constantly, interrupted by a flamboyantly revolving wave when he shows his watch.

His comic vocabulary is more that of a silent-film star than a stand-up. You see this most vividly in his famous bit when he announces to the crowd that he is afflicted with “happy feet.” Then his body convulses in spastic, silly motions.

When he does this in 1976, he appears to be suffering from a bizarre but treatable condition. Three years later, with a vast stage to roam, it’s a joyful, uninhibited dance with unlikely elegance, a childlike fantasy. Who wouldn’t want happy feet?

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: He’s Wild And Crazy, But a Subtle Guy, Too. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe